A Chicago official's bizarre and wrongheaded constitutional theory.

In the 1950s, Democratic politicians in Virginia, led by Sen. Harry Byrd Sr., undertook an effort called "massive resistance." Through various legislative and administrative means, they sought to circumvent the mandate for school integration that the Supreme Court had issued in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education.

Similar stirrings can be heard today in Illinois--specifically, from the Cook County State's Attorney's office, which prosecutes crimes in Chicago. At issue is not the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection before the law, but the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms.

Over the past quarter-century, most states have enacted laws easing the burdens on citizens who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights. But the Land of Lincoln has been a laggard--so much so that Illinois is now the only state in the country with an across-the-board ban on the carrying of concealed firearms in public.

That ban, as we noted in December, has been successfully challenged in court. In Moore v. Madigan, a three-judge panel of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held, in the words of Judge Richard Posner, that "the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment . . . compels us to reverse" lower-court decisions upholding the ban "and remand them to their respective district courts for the entry of declarations of unconstitutionality and permanent injunctions."

Immediately striking down the law and leaving nothing in its place could cause public-safety problems. To avoid this problem, Posner explained, "we order our mandate stayed for 180 days to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations . . . on the carrying of guns in public." It was at a state House hearing in Springfield that the massive resistance-like idea was mooted.

"Prosecutors in Chicago are telling state lawmakers they can essentially ignore a federal court ruling and not legalize concealed carry in Illinois," reports the Illinois Watchdog website:

Paul Castiglione, policy director for the Cook County State's Attorney's office, told lawmakers there is no need for a new law.

"Only the Illinois Supreme Court can declare a statue [sic] from (the legislature) unconstitutional," Castiglione told lawmakers Tuesday. "I heard (someone) say that after 180 days our UUW (unlawful use of weapon) statute is unconstitutional. Not so."

Castiglione's assertion met with skepticism even from a Chicago Democrat, Rep. Michael Zalewski. "We're charged with passing a constitutional [law] down here in the next 60 to 90 days," the Watchdog quotes Zalewski as saying. "And if there is a dissenting belief that there is no ticking clock, it's going to cause all of us who wish to come to a constitutional, fair, and balanced solution [to have] a more difficult slog ahead."

Castiglione's constitutional theory is so bizarre and wrongheaded as to suggest either shocking ignorance or an intent to deceive. It's true that the Illinois Supreme Court is the final authority when it comes to interpreting the state constitution. But federal courts strike down state statutes all the time for violating the U.S. Constitution. In the 2010 case of McDonald v. Chicago, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment, like most other provisions of the Bill of Rights, is "incorporated" against the states. That means a state or local law violating it is as unconstitutional as a federal one.

The December ruling isn't necessarily the final word. Last month Illinois's Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a petition asking the full Seventh Circuit to rehear the case. If that petition is denied or the full court upholds the panel's ruling, she could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not yet taken a position on whether the Second Amendment protects a right to concealed carry.

It's entirely legitimate for the state to exhaust its appeals. But following Castiglione's advice to defy the authority of the federal courts would be as outrageously lawless as massive resistance was.

Gibson With a Twist

Who's the most liberal House Republican? With the two political parties so polarized, these days that's like asking who's the world's tallest midget (or shortest giant, take your pick). The answer, according to National Journal, is Rep. Chris Gibson of upstate New York, and based on NJ's analysis of his 2011-12 voting record, he's still more conservative than all but nine of that term's House Democrats, four of whom retired rather than try for re-election in GOP-friendly districts.

Gibson is one of the few Republican House members whose districts gave a majority of support to Barack Obama, so he's an inviting target for Democrats looking for 2014 pickup opportunities. And National Journal reports one candidate has already entered the field:

Fewer than 100 days after Gibson survived his first reelection campaign, wealthy 26-year-old investor Sean Eldridge--who is married to FacebookFB-1.26% cofounder Chris Hughes and campaigned for New York's gay-marriage law--filed Federal Election Commission papers to run in the district.

Eldridge may be wealthy, but Hughes is so fabulously so that he recently acquired The New Republic for a tiny percentage of his assets. Campaign-finance law places strict limits on donations, but candidates and their spouses can spend an unlimited amount on their own campaigns.

Hughes is Eldridge's spouse under New York law but, pursuant to the Defense of Marriage Act, not under federal law. In a case from New York (analyzed here in December), the Second U.S. Circuit Court of appeals struck down the relevant provision of DOMA. The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted an appeal, which it is expected to decide early this summer. Chris Gibson may have more riding on the outcome than any other heterosexual in America.

What's Michael Powell, Chopped Liver?

Time.com's Sam Gustin makes a factual error in the course of speculating about who'll be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission:

If [current chairman Julius] Genachowski does step down, [Mignon] Clyburn would become the most senior Democrat on the commission. And as an African-American woman, she would be a ground-breaking choice to lead an agency that has only been led by white men over the course of its 80-year history. Look for Clyburn to become acting chair of the FCC for a few months if Genachowski steps down.

Gustin seems to have forgotten about Michael Powell, who served as chairman from 2001 through 2005. Perhaps he forgot Powell is black because his father, Colin Powell, is not African-American. (He's the son of Jamaican immigrants.) But his mother, Alma Powell, is.

The guys at DiversityInc.com, meanwhile, are busy doing their best heightening the confusion. A reader writes in:

One of my best friends in high school was Black but traced is [sic] ancestry back to France. It bothered him whenever someone referred to him as "African-American."

On the flip side, one of my son's best friends in high school was born in America, but both of his parents were born and raised in Africa. He could legitimately be called "African-American" but probably never will be since all of them are Caucasian.

Just goes to show, you can't judge a book by its cover . . . or a person by his/her color.

Of course the reader has naively run afoul of the intricate rules of political correctness, and the unnamed DiversityInc-er gives him a good scolding:

Yes and no. I acknowledge that you posted your comment with positive sincerity; however, I agree with your first point, but not the second.

"African-American" refers to descendants of enslaved Black people who are from the United States. The reason we use an entire continent (Africa) instead of a country (e.g., "Italian-American") is because slave masters purposefully obliterated tribal ancestry, language and family units in order to destroy the spirit of the people they enslaved, thereby making it impossible for their descendants to trace their history prior to being born into slavery. . . .

For purposes of respect, as well as providing context to current-day events and economic realities, it is important to acknowledge and understand this part of American history. America is unique in having people who are African-American.

The author even goes on, to observe that "Comparing indentured servitude of white people to the history of African-Americans is insulting." That's apropos of nothing, since the reader didn't make such a comparison. But anyway, the main lesson from this exchange is that the purpose of terms like "African-American" is not to describe but to exclude.

Homer Nods

We erred yesterday in asserting that it is necessary to have a bank account in order to have one's Social Security checks direct-deposited. The Social Security Administration has a program called Direct Express, a debit card that can be used for purchases and cash withdrawals without a bank account. There doesn't appear to be an identification requirement, although the card does require one to memorize a personal identification number. One suspects those who object to ID for voting would also object to a PIN requirement, given that old people frequently have memory problems.

Reader Quentin Langley asks a good question: "How many of the 7% who still receive checks do they suppose are best reached via a website?"

Meanwhile, Abigail Thernstrom, whose appearance in an NPR debate on voter ID we noted in the same item, writes with an amusing anecdote: "It took place in the NPR studio, and I couldn't get into the damn NPR building without showing a government-issued picture ID. I walked in and said to [hostess] Michel Martin, case closed. She just looked miserable."

Then again, it's not as if you're exercising a fundamental constitutional right when you go on the radio. Oh wait . . .

"Scientists say they may be able to determine the eventual fate of the cosmos as they probe the properties of the Higgs boson," BBC reports:

A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.

It all depends on some precise numbers related to the Higgs that researchers are currently trying to pin down. . . .

One idea that it throws up is the possibility of a cyclical universe, in which every so often all of space is renewed.

"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.

"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news.

"What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician told BBC News.

But scientists say they can't do the calculations until the Large Hadron Collider, currently down for maintenance, comes back on line, probably in 2015.

It would be a pity if the universe were swept away before then, with scientists on the verge of such a breakthrough.

Or maybe it would be a bigger pity if the universe were swept away after such a breakthrough. Ah, we guess ultimately it doesn't make much difference.

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